Chapter 5 - THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LEFT BEHIND
I had never visited a temporary housing center before.
My family had come close to needing one once, after my father left and my mother’s cleaning jobs dried up. I remembered standing in a grocery aisle at thirteen while she counted coins in her palm, telling me we might need to stay with relatives for a while. We managed not to. I had spent the years since pretending the distance between us and that possibility was wider than it had been.
The Harbor Lantern assistance office occupied the ground floor of a brick church on the South Side. Its sign had faded, but someone had planted yellow chrysanthemums beside the entrance. Gabriel waited in the car while I went inside with Detective Hart. He had agreed that the people who came to the office should not be pressured by the presence of a Moretti.
Inside, a woman named Mae Alvarez was stacking bags of donated clothing. She was forty-two, with a bright red scarf around her neck and a voice that warmed the room before her smile did.
“Detective,” she said, shaking Hart’s hand. Then she looked at me. “You’re the woman from the dog story.”
I flushed. “I wish it hadn’t been a story.”
“I saw the photo of your face. You’re doing better?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me. Makes me feel ancient.”
She led us into a little office where posters about tenant rights hung above a desk scarred by years of coffee cups. Detective Hart explained why we had come: old Harbor Lantern records suggested money intended for families had gone missing. Mae’s expression lost its warmth.
“We knew,” she said. “We just couldn’t prove where it went.”
She opened a filing cabinet and brought out a binder of copied checks and handwritten notes. Four years earlier, thirty-eight families had been promised temporary apartments after a private developer acquired their building. Only eleven received full relocation support. Others got checks that bounced, rooms with unsafe heating, or nothing at all.
“My cousin slept in her car with two boys for six weeks,” Mae said. “The paperwork says she received twenty-three thousand dollars. She received three hundred.”
“Who told you the rest had been paid?” I asked.
“A man from Bellini Development. He said the account was closed and the Morettis couldn’t be bothered to answer questions.”
I felt my cheeks grow hot. Gabriel’s mother had made that foundation to help people like Mae’s cousin. Somebody had used her reputation to make the betrayal more believable.
“Did Lucia know?” Detective Hart asked.
Mae nodded. “She came here before she died. Sat in that chair you’re using. She asked people to tell her what they received, not what they were promised. She cried when she saw the numbers.”
“Did she say who was responsible?”
“She said she was still finding out.” Mae ran a thumb along the binder’s edge. “She also told me her son would make it right once he knew.”
I wanted to believe that. But I had heard Gabriel admit he signed the approvals. Making things right would require more than writing another check.
Mae leaned toward me. “She brought her dog that day. Big golden fellow. He lay by the radiator and snored. One of the children fed him crackers until Mrs. Moretti gently told her his stomach couldn’t take any more.”
“Bruno,” I said.
“Yes. Bruno.” Her smile returned briefly. “He was more patient than most people I meet.”
As we left, Mae caught my sleeve gently, careful of my bandages. “Whatever you do, don’t let this turn into a fight about powerful people hurting one another. The families are still here. They need homes, not headlines.”
“I’ll remember,” I told her.
Outside, Gabriel stood beside the car, holding a paper cup of coffee he had not touched. He looked at my face.
“Did it go badly?”
“It went honestly,” I said. “That’s harder.”
I told him what Mae had shown us. He did not interrupt. At the end, he stared across the street at a woman carrying groceries up the church steps.
“My mother was here,” he said. “I was at the office arguing over an import deal while she sat in a church asking why people hadn’t received rent money.”
“Then maybe this time you can go inside,” I said. “Not as the boss. As the person whose signature is on the paper.”
He nodded. “I will. If they want me there.”
That afternoon, an independent accountant called with preliminary findings. The funds that should have reached Harbor Lantern had passed through several consultant companies. Two belonged to Bellini associates. A third company’s ownership was harder to trace. Its name was Ashcroft Logistics.
Gabriel recognized it. “Renzo used Ashcroft for deliveries when we rebuilt the lake properties.”
“Was it legitimate?” the accountant asked.
“Some of the work was real. I don’t know about all of it.”
The accountant paused. “There’s another issue. Someone accessed the foundation’s archived ledger yesterday using Renzo Moretti’s credentials. The account was supposed to have been disabled.”
Marco checked with the security team. Renzo had not been in the mansion yesterday, but his assistant, a young man named Caleb Price, had entered through the service entrance around noon. Caleb had previously managed financial records for the foundation.
I recognized him from the house. He brought Renzo’s holiday cards every December and always asked whether Bruno needed anything from the pet store. I had once thought him kind.
“He knows the study,” I said. “And the code?”
“Possibly,” Gabriel replied. “We need to ask.”
Caleb agreed to meet Detective Hart at her office the following morning. But at six that evening, he failed to appear for a scheduled call with Renzo’s lawyers. At seven, his apartment door was found open by the building superintendent. His coat and wallet remained inside. His phone was gone.
The detective made no public statement. She asked Gabriel not to search for him privately or send anyone to pressure his acquaintances. He agreed, although I could see how much effort that agreement cost him.
“I used to think this kind of problem could be solved with three calls,” Gabriel admitted as we sat in the study. “Call someone who owes me money, call someone who owes me loyalty, call someone who owes me fear.”
“What do you think now?”
“I think that’s how you end up with people too afraid to tell you the truth.”
Bruno pushed his nose against Gabriel’s wrist. The room smelled of cedarwood and the dog’s medication. Outside, the sky had cleared, leaving the city lights bright beyond the glass.
Then my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, but this time I answered with Detective Hart on the other line, as she had instructed.
A man’s voice whispered, “Is this Emma Collins?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Caleb Price. I can’t go to the station yet.”
“Are you safe?”
“No.” I heard traffic, then a metallic rumble as if a train were passing. “I made copies. The original invoices. The board minutes. Everything Renzo told me to destroy.”
“You need to speak to Detective Hart,” I said. “She’s listening.”
His breathing quickened. “I tried. Someone followed me from my apartment. I couldn’t tell who it was.”
Hart took over, giving him calm instructions and asking for a location he could verify. He said he was near a train station. Then he blurted out something that made my chest tighten.
“Lucia didn’t die alone.”
Gabriel looked up from the sofa.
Caleb continued, his words spilling out. “I saw a call log. She phoned Renzo that morning. He went to the lake house. Then somebody from Bellini Development went too. Renzo told everyone she had a heart attack, but the first ambulance report says she was alive when the driver arrived.”
“Who was with her?” Detective Hart asked.
“I don’t know. I only have the logs.”
“Tell me where you are. We can send officers.”
Caleb hesitated. “There’s a coffee shop across from the station. Blue awning. I’m outside the—”
The line went dead.
Detective Hart was already dispatching help. Gabriel rose so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
“We stay here,” I said before he could speak.
His expression flashed with anger. “Someone may be hurting him.”
“And if you rush there with your men, they’ll have a reason to say he was yours to silence.”
For several seconds, he simply stared at me. Then he sat down again, shaking his head.
“You’re right,” he said. “I hate that you’re right.”
The minutes dragged. We watched the clock above the fireplace while Bruno slept on his blanket, unaware that one man’s voice might change everything we believed about Lucia’s last day.
At last, Detective Hart called back. Officers had found Caleb behind the coffee shop. He was shaken and bruised, but alive. They had taken him to a secure location to give a statement.
“He asked us to tell Emma something,” Hart said.
“What?” I asked.
“He said there is a second set of foundation books. The numbers you found at Blue Heron are only the beginning.”
“Where are they?”
Hart took a breath.
“Under the floor of your employer’s study.”
My eyes went to the rug beneath Bruno’s mattress.
May you like
The old dog had been sleeping on top of the evidence all along.
END OF CHAPTER 5
